Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 is 1775% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (1775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 will be much (more or less 918%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80800 (918%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be much (more or less 482%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.